Thursday, August 07, 2008

This [Bratz] doll projects a sexuality that has more to do with working on the Sunset Strip than enjoying a healthy girlhood.-M. Gigi Durham, The Lolita Effect

There have always been changes in society from one generation to the next. Parents have always noticed how their children’s world differs from the world of their own childhood. But what is happening now regarding sex and sexuality in the media and popular culture goes far beyond the changes that have occurred between other generations in the past. A revolution is taking place that we need to take seriously. It is a revolution that is harming our children and harming the wider community. -Diane E. Levin and Jean Kilbourne, excerpted from So Sexy So Soon (Go read the article)

Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (emphasis mine)-C.S. Lewis, as quoted in The Quotable Lewis

So the obvious question arises: How do we encourage our children to engage on deeper levels when nearly everything around them demands they orient toward instant gratification, cultivate appearance over character, and veer toward easy "solutions" rather than dig in and create long-term stability?

I dunno.

I guess the biggest obstacles kids face today are the examples set before them. (Lots of research available on the subject. The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce is a particularly pointed tome which discusses this subject and others related to it's title.) Children rarely choose to follow the old adage: Do as I say, not as I do. Once again, I suppose this indicates that we, their parents, have to get off our collective hineys and set the bar higher for ourselves whether we like it or not.

And now Q's out, so that's all I have to say for tonight. Rest well and then give out some extra hugs and kisses.

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Me

I'm mothering five gorgeous, perfect children, and homeschooling three of them. I am one of the best-blessed mamas in the universe. Oh and -- there's the small matter of neuro issues here. I suspect that somehow the littlest one's Special Needs behave as some sort of condenser that delivers unusual configurations of Rainbows, Butterflies and Bliss, right in the midst of the ubiquitous and itinerant crazy bits. So we have some stories to tell.